While I do think the ML list is a little dusty, do you notice the difference between their list and the readers’?

Yes, that’s right. The reader list falls into two distinct categories: 1) crap and 2) stuff they read in high school. To be fair, the bottom halves of the lists are more similar, but my reading on that is either that the ballot box was stuffed up top, or by the end the real readers showed up, because the other people hadn’t read 100 novels.

Do non-Scientologists actually read L. Ron? I’m not terribly surprised by Ayn Rand, even though, well, see 1) above. But where is Don DeLillo on the ML list?

I could do with way less Evelyn Waugh. Anyway, care to fight about it?

I agree with Matt. The first and last third of the book are great, but the middle made my eyes glaze over.

Who were these readers who rated L Ron so highly? I’ve read Battlefield Earth. The ONLY reason I read it was because L Ron was buddies with Robert Heinlein. Saying, “I was disappointed” is an understatement. What incredibly unimaginative schlock! I forced myself to read it all the way through, thinking it would improve. It didn’t. Wanna know how bad it was? The Travolta movie was better than the book! THAT’S how bad!

The Modern Library Top Ten looks like a list prepared by my mother back when she taught high school English.

I tend to regard such lists as meaningless. By what criteria are your favorites better than mine? I doubt the somewhat small percentage of the population who actually read novels regularly really holds the Hubbard novels in such high esteem. The scientologists skewed the results somehow, I am sure.

Assuming Bill read all the novels on his list and found them to be the best (on some basis), I have to say that he is a better man than I am. I could barely get through 10 pages of Ulysses by Joyce before I conceded it was not written for me. All the literati seem to worship that one, so I had to resign my membership after that.

Even people who read “trash” novels are reading more than the majority of the population, so I caution you against snubbing them.

I have, and many more. I’m a voracious reader. As mentioned above, my guilty pleasure is hard science fiction. I have over 4000 titles in that genre. Most of the classics I got from Mom (the English teacher). My wife is also a big reader. Her guilty pleasure? Janet Evanovich (I’ve also read the Plum collection).

I have tried and failed repeatedly to plow through Ulysses, though I think A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man is a great book. I can’t say I’e ever made it through Gravity’s Rainbow, either.

I like Waugh a lot, as a matter of fact, but can’t imagine anyone ranking Scoop and A Handful of Dust ahead of Brideshead Revisited, as one of these lists does. I thought Decline and Fall, Waugh’s first book, deserved to be on the list before those two. When you limit this list to English language novels in the 20th century, you’ve knocked out an awful lot of good books. I’d have to say I think The Sound and the Fury is the best of the bunch.